"This is a Take Back the Night awareness program speech I presented to some 600 students at Rutgers, April 17, 1998 and Penn State April 22, 1998."

—Suzanne Stutman

Take Back the Night

She cries out to me

The child within myself.

She clutches at me

Tugging at my thoughts

And asking to be remembered.

Her small fingers reach through time

And her sad, dark eyes

Burn the symbol of her pain

Onto my soul.

—Stutman, Broken Feather, 36

For the child I was, for all of my fellow survivors, and most of all, for the children, I remember.

After my uncle hurt me, he would leave a quarter on the bureau. And after he left I would hide it. And the next day I would spend it. If I think back really hard, I can remember the feel of those quarters clutched so tightly in my hand. I didn't know then that he was making me a part of a conspiracy, a secret, that I would pay dearly for in pain and shame for so many years of my life. I remember. Before I would fall asleep, I would stare at the ghost of the door. It was formed by the light coming through from the hallway. If I watched and tried not to blink or not close my eyes, then it wouldn't move or so I hoped. Every night in that room I lay, eyes wide open, watching, praying that the ghost would not move. It wasn't until so many years later that I came to understand that I was waiting for the door to open, frozen in fear and helplessness, and praying that it would not and that I would be safe for one more night.

I tried to tell, but no one was listening. And I cried a lot, but my tears seemed silent, not to make a difference. So I stopped trying to tell and I really didn't have the words anyway to say what was happening to me. I felt invisible. And I fell silent, thinking that what was happening was the way of things, and that I was being punished for being bad, and that I was indeed the ugliest, the stupidest, the baddest person in the whole world.

I believed that for some reason what was happening was supposed to happen. That I was supposed to hurt like this. So I got up and changed the sheets during the night, or put a towel on my bed to cover the wet spots. And I complained a lot of stomach aches and didn't want to go to school. And I was always afraid, because I never knew when it was going to happen. And I felt so different from everybody else because I had this terrible secret I had to keep, and I was an ugly, bad and awful person. But I would try to be better. I would try to make people love me. But I was so alone. And I didn't know how.

When I was a little girl I had no voice. I was invisible. Nobody listened. All that is changed now. And I raise my voice on behalf of the children, so that they don't have to suffer anymore.

Shadow man,

dripping darkness.

Coming softly,

moving darkness.

Looming dark,

moving shadow.

You steal

into

my

fear

until

my silent

screams

illuminate

you.

And I,

transfixed,

electrified,

am forced

to die.

Again.

(Stutman, Broken Feather, 39)

I didn't really know what it was that pained me, but I felt that it was a natural and necessary part of my inner self. I also felt that for some reason I had to hide it, that it was for some reason dangerous to show, even to the people who loved me the most, how much I was afraid, how little I really liked myself, and most of all, my anger.

I cannot begin to explain to you the fear. I would wake up with it. I would go to sleep with it. It would awaken me in the night. And that was the worst time. Something was going to happen and I didn't know what it was. I kept closet doors closed, but not before I looked into closets before I went to sleep. I looked under the bed. I kept the light on in the bathroom, because I understood that darkness was my enemy. What I understood deeply was that no one was really to be trusted. That anything could change at any moment. That I had to fight very hard to be loved because I wasn't really worthy of it, so I had to be good, very good, always good. And I could never really let my guard down. From the earliest time came the lesson. No one must ever know.

I became in my home and in my teaching, and in fact in most every situation, a defender. Knowing what it was like to be invisible, I found myself fighting for the rights of those who were treated in any way lesser than. And because I had experienced so little true kindness in my early life, I understood always themagnificence of the simplest act of mercy. Kindness, gentleness seemed to me the greatest balance in life. And I must say, they still do. To give to those who may not have visibility, who may not have love, moments, space, the strength of telling these are the lessons I learned from the silent world around me. These are the lessons I learned from my deepest self. So in trying to heal myself, I came to understand instinctively the importance of the healing balance of caring. I became a mother, then I became a teacher. From both I learned to stop the world. To try to make it, in my own private sphere, a clean, well-lighted place. To do for others what was rarely done for me.

I began to write my story in poems and sketches and entitled my book Broken Feather: A Journey to Healing. I would write the pieces, or they would write me, and each time I finished I would understand more about myself, I would hold in my hands another small piece of the past. For so long I had been teaching the voices of others. Now I was writing my testimony, bringing my voice out of the darkness. I came to understand that there was no going back. I would have to break the silence. Big time.

I have found in each encounter with others who have been victimized, men and women, the boys and girls in them still locked in pain, that what happens to we who are abused as children is often much the same. I have heard tales of horror. Tales of fear. Tales of rejection. Over the past year and a half I have heard so many stories indeed, everywhere I go others share their stories often in secret. And I think always why is it we who are not believed? Why must these horrors of abuse which can diminish a soul for a lifetime not be shared? Why cannot this secret be brought to light? What is wrong with this society when the victim is to blame and the abuser is free to hurt again?

Which brings me to the next step in my journey. In this short time I have found a new advocacy: I advocate for survivors, to let them know that they are loved, that they are not alone. That the healing journey is indeed possible. That it is o.k. to tell. And the big lesson. The one it takes so long to really believe. That it is not their fault, what happened. It is not our fault.

I have done fundraisers for various child abuse prevention agencies, nationally and internationally, and a major portion of the proceeds of my book goes to benefit these agencies. I am on the Board of Friends of the Children, a group of volunteers which works to help fund The Center for Children's Support in Stratford, N.J. Some of my new poems have been on display at Unicef House, serving as my interpretation of the artworks of abused children from the Center for Children's Support. It is our hope to turn this project into a book to benefit the Center in the near future. I have been working for the last year in an afterschool program for disadvantaged children, and I go into area high schools to talk to teen mothers, some who have histories of abuse, to let them know that they are not alone. I have come to understand that I must use my power to try to build power in others.

I have learned through my own life to take back the night. And I ask you, particularly you students, you who are among our best and brightest, to do the same. Do not believe that one person can't make a difference. If you make a difference in one life you have stopped the world.

It is the aloneness of abuse which is part of what is so terrible. It isolates, it denegrates, it makes us feel that we are bad, and ugly and useless and the list goes on. In fact, those of us who have been so wounded have our own kind of beauty: we understand pain and invisibility and vulnurability and silence. We have often the passion and the compassion to reach out to others, to try with every ounce of strength within us to take the pain away. This is our gift. For we are like the phoenix risen from the ashes. We must make the day bright for those not as strong as we have become. We must march, we must protest, we must legislate, we must raise our voices into the darkness so that no children be allowed to fall, no victims suffer in silence and shame. In so doing we take back the night.